LONDON LIFE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 97, 15 December 1931, Page 7

LONDON LIFE

Geoffrey

Tebbutt)

films with lunch MR. G. FAWKES LIVES ON USES OF ADVERTISEMENT (Specially written for the "Post" by

LONDON, November 5. To remain at one's seat in the dining room of a large London hotel? and enjoy coffee and liqueurs while a full-length talkie is shown after lunch is rather a new experience. It came my way through the British and Dominions Film Corporation— who are displaying commendahle enterprise in the race to draw level with United States producers — showing their latest-film "Carnival," to an audience of critics at the Dorchester Hotel. The occasion found them in an appreciative mood, for ] even critics ought to be pleased when i a gloomy autumn afternoon in London is shut out, and, with elegant food in process of digestion, the lights go out and the sunlit canals and rhythmic gondoliers of Veniee come glittering into the foreground. Mr. Matheson Lang, in his natural person of a.hearty Englishman, was with us at the luncheon, and again after it in his screen personality of a wronged italian actor. I do not know whether this particular form of combining food and film entertainment is absolutely new, but it is an admirable idea, and one that may spread. I cannot enter any of the "super" hostelries of London without thinking of that paragon of the art of writing about them — the late Arnold Bennett. I have wondered whether it was the Dorchester that he had in mind when his last full-sized work, "Imperial Palace," was written. Even his eye, all-knowing where hotels were concerned, must have rested

with pleasure upon the product of the wealth of money and material that have cause to rise upon the site in Park Lane of one of London's old mansions a gigantic building in which the whole aim is to secure the aesthetic satisfaction and physical comfort of its temporary inhabitants. If the next company to build a luxury hotel iii London — or New York or Paris or Madrid — want a name that is going to he a reflection .of the standards it sets out to achieve, they should call it the "Arnold Bennett." Humbly, I consider that an advertising brain-wave. The Late Mr. Guy Fawkes "Spare a penny for the guy, guv'nor?" is the plaintive appeal from urchins of both sexes that most inhabitants of London have had addressed to tfiem for the past week. It will end for another year from tonight, when the results of the pennies spared will go up -in the from of Catherine wheels and sky-rockets. (When the Fifth of November was one of the red-letter days of my youthful years, the "Chinese Bunger," which, if I remember aright; made the biggest noise and the most blinding flash, was the popular favourite). I doubt if there is any personage in history whose memory is so cherished by youth as the late Mr. Guy Fawkes. Parents throughout the British Empire are called upon, some days before the anniversary of his attempt to cause a real sensation in Parliament, to make some contribution towards its proper celebration. Here in London, the appeals for funds are of a public, though definitely unofficial, character. In every street and subway, there are groups of children with their "guys" — most horrible representations riding in state in a go-cart — eagerly anticipating odd coppers from passers-by. But the competition is so intense that no individual enterprise could show much of a turnover! Personally, my most potent j recollection of Guy Fawkes Day is of a terribly scorChed pair of hands, ' sustained after patient — and, unfori tunately, successful! — attempt to make a reluctant sky-rocket take to the air with the gunpowder fizzing from both ends of it. I do not think I was ever afterwards so anxious to beatify Mr. Fawkes. How To Get a Big Postbag To those who derive a real thrill from the sight of a large pile of letters awaiting them on the breakfast table, I suggest an unfailing method, discovered unwittingly by a friend who published in "The Times" the announeement of the birth of a daughter, It started as A trickle, and became a deluge— first the three beautifullytyped letters from hospitals, conveying most earnest and heartfelt congratulations upon the happy event, and suggesting that surely no more appropriate means of celebrating it could be devised than to send a cheque.to each of them. Then more hospitals, more eharity organisations, all brimming over with felicitations in the first paragraph, and all asking for a donation in the second. And then the manufacturers of perambulators, cots, bootees, baby food and books on baby management, which but paved the way. for the insurance agents, all insistent upon the merits of their policies for the new-born babe, the proud parent nobly and gravely facing his fresh responsibilities, and hinting politely (insurance agents are very polite) at the calamity of the early death of the breadwinner By all the horrible means so readily at our disposal to-day, were he not eoyered by their own partieularly benign policy. It becomes a little boring on the third and fourth days, when . the samples of baby food and talcum powder begin to arrive, and the insurance campaigners turn their activities into personal calls at the home and the office. But for anyone who envies the postbags that popular film stars are alleged to receive, this is a [ sure way to achieve them. j The Dog Parade [ The canine population of these [ Islands is estimated at 3,000,000, | which does not, I think, inelude packs i of bounds for hunting purposes (an'd woe hetide the innocent who ealls these latter "dogs"). Nobody having I walked in a London park in a weekj end would dispute this figure, for a | large number of most breeds known j to mankind, as well as a still larger number of breeds known to nobody, ! turn every open space into an impromptu dog show. Londoners are famed for their

fondness for animals, and to compliment an Englishman upon his dog, or to throw some doubt upon the spotlessness of its lineage, is one of the few sure methods of thawing out one of the more rigid variety. Londoners often show for animals, dead or alive, a concern which, paradoxieally, they do not always display for their fellow-humans. This is not necessarily to their detriment, and I have much sympathy with the man who said something to the effect £hat the more he saw of humans the better he thought of his dog. I , am constantly reminded of the Cockney memory for pets long dead by an inscription in a little square behind Fleet Street: — IN MEMORY OF OLD BOB Killed by a taxi, 25/5/25 "Bob" was accustomed for many years to signal, by barking, the arrival and departure of the lorries laden with rolls of newsprint for the newspaper ofiice in the square, and was the firm friend of the many workmen there. He met his death by walking backwards under a taxi in the course of his "job" of signalling a paper lorry out. His epitaph, not in the everlasting stone, but in short-lived chalk, looks as fresh to-day as when it was inscribed six years, ago., "Bob's" friends never omit to keep his memorial chalked afresh. That says much for the memories of Cockney workmen.